Get Involved/Issue Reporting
Have you gone through steps to troubleshoot an issue and determined it's a bug in a piece of KDE software?
Do you have an idea for how KDE software can be improved?
KDE would like to know about it! This page will give you an overview of the process of reporting a bug or making a feature request using https://bugs.kde.org, KDE's Bugzilla issue tracker.
Make absolutely sure you've gone through the steps to troubleshoot the issue and made sure it's a valid bug worth reporting!
Don't open Bugzilla tickets for vague or subjective matters, support questions, developer questions, overbroad requests for giant changes to everything, or new features with a massive scope. Instead, try bringing up the matter on the KDE Discuss forum or another online discussion group of your choice.
If the bug is a security issue, send an email to [email protected]. For more information, see https://kde.org/info/security/.
Step 1: Log into bugs.kde.org
https://bugs.kde.org/ is KDE's bug tracker. At the moment, it does not use the credentials of your invent.kde.org account; you need a separate one.
If this is your first time on the KDE Bugzilla, it's time to sign up for an account! Click on the "New Account" text at the top of the page. You will be prompted for your email address and can then proceed with the usual process of setting up an account, and then log into it.
Step 2: Make sure it hasn't already been opened
First, let's make sure that this issue hasn't already been reported. Navigate to https://bugs.kde.org/query.cgi?format=specific and search for a few keywords that describe your problem. For example, if Dolphin crashes when you attempt to access a Samba share, search for "dolphin samba crash".
Look through the Bugzilla tickets that show up in the search results. If you find one that matches, feel free to subscribe yourself to it simply by pressing the "Save Changes" button. Please do not intentionally open a duplicate Bugzilla ticket or leave a comment saying "I'm affected too.".
If you find an issue that's marked as RESOLVED FIXED that seems to describe your issue, do not re-open it or post a new comment in it. Issues that look alike often have subtly different root causes that need to be fixed separately. Instead, submit a new bug report and mention the one you found that's marked as already fixed.
If none of the Bugzilla tickets returned by the search seem to describe your issue, proceed.
Step 3: Open a high-quality Bugzilla ticket
It's time to open a new Bugzilla ticket! Click on the "New" text in the top-left corner of the screen. You will be presented with a list of products. Take your best guess for what product the ticket should belong to, and don't worry if you get it wrong. This is what KDE's bug triagers are for! Over time you'll get a feel for which products correspond to which issues.
Summary
In the "Summary" field, write a good title that succinctly describes the issue, can be read as a complete sentence, and avoids using charged language.
Steps to Reproduce
Write detailed steps to reproduce section in the Bugzilla ticket. This step is very important!
Here's an example of a perfect set of steps to reproduce:
STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Open System Monitor.
2. Click the "History" list item in the sidebar.
3. Click it a second time.
OBSERVED RESULT
The list item becomes de-selected.EXPECTED RESULT
Nothing happens; the list item remains selected.
Screenshots and screen recordings
If the issue involves anything visible in the program's user interface, please attach screenshots--or better yet, a screen recording. Bugzilla tickets that can show an issue visually have a much higher chance of being promptly resolved.
You can press the Print Screen button on your keyboard to open Spectacle to take a screenshot. To take a screen recording, Press Meta+R.
Use the "Add Attachment" button to attach your screenshot or screen recording. Don't post links to images hosted elsewhere, as they will eventually go stale and the images will become inaccessible.
Software versions
Open the Info Center program, click the "Copy to Clipboard" button, and paste the output here.
If your issue involves a KDE app, we also need to know the app version; you can find that in the program itself, in the Help menu > About <program> window.
Things to avoid
Don't report multiple issues
Open multiple Bugzilla tickets to report multiple issues. A Bugzilla ticket describing multiple issues is not actionable and is likely to be closed.
If the conversation in your Bugzilla ticket derails and starts to describe multiple issues, open other Bugzilla tickets to describe them, and try to redirect the conversation back to the original issue.
Don't propose a solution
Always describe the problem itself, rather than proposing a solution to it.
The problem you're encountering is obvious to you, but it will only be equally obvious to KDE's bug triagers and developers if you describe it with detail and accuracy. If you propose an initial solution without adequately describing the problem, they'll have a hard time figuring out what's actually going on. Even if your proposed solution makes sense, it will be difficult to verify this without knowing what problem it needs to solve.
If it's a crash, don't forget the backtrace
If your bug is a crash or a hang, always include a backtrace. If you use the DrKonqi crash reporting assistant to report the bug, this will happen automatically.
Do not submit a Bugzilla ticket about a crash or a hang if you are unable to include a backtrace, as it is not actionable and will be closed.
Next steps
Thanks for the Bugzilla ticket! You just helped make KDE software a little bit better.
Monitor the email address that you use for your Bugzilla account. You will receive an email if a KDE bug triager or developer needs to contact you for any reason.
Nevertheless, since KDE is a mostly volunteer project, you may not receive an immediate response. This is normal and should not be taken to mean that your Bugzilla ticket is not valued! Rather, it is a reflection of KDE's limited issue triaging resources. If you would like to help alleviate this situation, becoming a KDE bug triager is one of the absolute best ways to contribute!
Issue tracker etiquette
Using an issue tracker may be an unfamiliar experience. Here are some tips to help your interpersonal interactions be as smooth as possible:
Remember your manners
Filing a Bugzilla ticket is akin to mildly criticizing someone's work — work that was likely done for free, on personal time, as a labor of love. Please respect the developers by being polite and patient. Ask yourself: "what would my mother say if she read my words here?"
More practically, acting rude, annoying, or argumentative is counterproductive because volunteer developers will avoid fixing issues that require them to interact with unpleasant people. Would you do unpaid work for a stranger who is annoying or insulting you? Probably not.
Have realistic expectations
Most developers working on KDE software are unpaid volunteers. Those who work on KDE software for a living are typically paid by their employer to work on specific areas of interest to their employer, not general user-reported issues.
As a result, resources are limited for fixing issues reported by users or even noticing and replying to them. Most of the time there will be a lot of waiting involved, and possibly a lot of discussion too. This is normal.
If a Bugzilla ticket is going unaddressed, this is probably a sign that KDE's development resources are stretched thin. It's not helpful or effective to poke the developers by posting things like "Me too!" or "I have this bug as well!" or "Why doesn't anyone want to fix these very important issues? Doesn't KDE care?????" We definitely care, but we don't always have the resources to fix everything quickly!
Consider trying to fix the issue yourself, or donate money to KDE so that there are eventually enough resources to hire full-time developers to fix user-submitted bug issues.
Also, Bugzilla tickets are not assigned to specific people; anyone can fix a Bugzilla ticket, respond to the reporter, engage in discussion, and so on.
Have a thick skin
Sometimes your Bugzilla ticket will get closed without the resolution you're hoping for. This feels disappointing, but it's not the end of the world, so try not to take it personally. The project is larger than any one of us.
Submit patches using invent.kde.org, not the issue tracker
A Bugzilla ticket with a patch is an incredible blessing. But patches attached to Bugzilla tickets tend to get missed and become stale over time, which is a real shame. Instead of attaching your patch to the Bugzilla ticket, please submit it as a merge request using invent.kde.org instead, and paste a link to the merge request in the Bugzilla ticket.
Why don't you use GitLab issues?
Understand what the resolution statuses mean
Some of them can sound a little harsh, but don't take it personally. These words are just descriptions of the different statuses for the Bugzilla ticket itself. In particular, RESOLVED does not necessarily mean that the issue has been fixed for you, just that the Bugzilla ticket itself is no longer considered actionable by the developers. Specifically:
- RESOLVED FIXED means the issue has been fixed by KDE — even if the version that contains the fix has not been released yet, or if you are not yet using the version that contains this fix. This might be because you have not yet upgraded your system, or because your distribution does not offer recent enough versions of KDE software, which is often the case with LTS releases. You can see the earliest version of the KDE software containing the fix in the "Version Fixed In" field. If you find that your distribution does not offer recent enough versions of KDE software for important bug fixes, you might want to consider switching to a different distribution that's closer to the release schedule of the software it ships.
- RESOLVED WORKSFORME means the bug can no longer be reproduced by the original poster or any of the developers — even if it is not clear what fixed the issue for them.
- RESOLVED DUPLICATE means this particular bug report is no longer needed because the same issue is already tracked elsewhere — even if the issue in question has not yet been fixed.
- RESOLVED UPSTREAM means the issue is not caused by any KDE software, but rather in some upstream software that KDE software depends on, such as Qt or another software library — even if the issue has not yet been fixed in that upstream software, or if the version of it that fixes the bug is not yet released or available in your distro.
- RESOLVED DOWNSTREAM means the issue is not caused by any KDE software, but rather somewhere downstream in your distro or 3rd-party content — even if that issue has not yet been fixed in the downstream software, or if the version of it that fixes the bug is not yet released or available in your distro.
- RESOLVED INTENTIONAL means the issue is not actually considered a real issue, or describes something that was designed this way intentionally, or the issue cannot be fixed without an unreasonable amount of engineering effort, or it's a feature request that doesn't match the intended scope or design of the software.
- RESOLVED NOT A BUG means the Bugzilla ticket itself is describing something that isn't a valid bug or feature request, which should be communicated somewhere else.
- RESOLVED UNMAINTAINED means the version of the software that the issue was reported against is no longer receiving updates and is therefore not eligible for support by KDE on the bug tracker. Consider upgrading to a newer version if possible.